Live Communications Server (LCS) & IM
I am trying to understand the model of an IM system. I understand that LCS provides Initiation, Control and Termination of IM sessions (including security).
What I do not understand is the message path once the session is initiated. Do messages flow thru the server or is a peer-to-peer connection established between the session parties?
Any other descriptions or information sources for the IM model are requested. The info that I have found on the MS site relates more to deployment than the model.
Thanks
[533 byte] By [
SNGILB] at [2007-12-26]
I'm not sure about how large suppliers like MS do this, but I've build one once and decided that I didn't want all the messages running through the server, simply cause this wont scale very well and it will limit performance on all sessions.
I would guess MS and ICQ would run into the same problems and have implemented a P2P connection, but as I sad, I'm not sure.
You could find out, by connecting to someone while having a network monitoring tool active (or a personal learning firewall for that matter). It will show you the IP you're connecting to. You could then ask the other party to give you their IP-adress and see. Or you can set this test up by using 2 computers yourself (and 2 accounts offcourse) and see if you connect to your own LAN or through the LAN, or an outside connection is made by both.
